*** Official GONE BABY GONE Discussion Thread

Re: *** Official GONE BABY GONE Discussion Thread

Does anyone else think that the idiotic title of this excellent film is preventing it from receiving it's due from the public?

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H

Re: *** Official GONE BABY GONE Discussion Thread

what do you mean? i don't see any idiotic for the title and i already had the idea about the film which i find it nice and a good movie to watch...

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Yeah, I think you're right. Sticking with the title of the book wasn't the best plan in this case. The average movie-goer has no idea what this movie is about especially since the marketing for it was less than stellar. Hopefully it'll be discovered by the public when it comes out on DVD after winning a few statues at the Oscars.

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I don't think the title is keeping people away. It's either a lack of ads or Ben Affleck at the helm. It's a shame, too. Great flick.

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Outside of the few directors which are household names, J6P doesn't give a wit who directs a movie. They certainly wouldn't stay away because of a director like a rest of us are wont to do. The Ben factor does not compute here.

I can't speak for the marketting 'cause I watch very little TV.

I am still getting over the fact that freaking Ben Affleck directed this gem. Impressive work there. Casey was fine, but it might have been a wiser move to tap his buddy Matt Damon for the lead. He would have brought in a substantial crowd. But I can see how this might be a problem on the heels of The Departed.

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H

Re: *** Official GONE BABY GONE Discussion Thread

You know, more surprising than any lack of public attention is the lack of attention here, even after the DVD has been out for months. I went looking for this thread after watching it again last night and was stunned to see there was nothing since last year.

Possibly, but Damon would have made Patrick an instant hero, whereas Casey Affleck made him someone both the audience and the other characters would always underestimate.

Affleck (the younger) has a gift for underplaying that Steve Buscemi used beautifully in a little film he directed called Lonesome Jim. In Gone Baby Gone it balances so interestingly against expressive powerhouses like Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris that all those scenes are even more powerful on a second viewing.

This may turn out to be my favorite film of 2007. And I'm baffled by people who hate the ending. The ending is perfect, whether or not you agree with Patrick's choice. It's the only choice he could make.

M.

Re: *** Official GONE BABY GONE Discussion Thread

As angry as the idea of returning the girl to her mother made me, it was the only choice.

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i don't think the title hurt the movie or Affleck as dir.


i work at a rental store and people are continually surprised when i tell them affleck directed it.

they also seem to be more interested when i tell them it is based on a book writtten by the same man who wrote the book Mystic River.

i thought the end was real, and felt that his wife was responding very selfishly.

how could he have done any thing else and it was a shame she didnt stand by him with his very difficult decision.

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I'm struck by the fact that people often express anger over Patrick's decision to return Amy to her mother, but no one (at least that I've seen) expresses anger at the abuse of official power to kidnap a child and fake her death in the name of providing a bereft couple with a "second chance" (and yes, providing a better life for Amy). However desirable the goal might appear to be in this particular case, the general principle, once established, leads in some pretty awful directions.

One poster in a thread in Software claimed that Patrick had no idea what he'd "sentenced" Amy to -- a characterization I find hard to fathom. How can anyone "sentence" someone to the life into which she was born, no matter how good or bad it may be? And Patrick knows exactly what that life is. He's from the neighborhood; he knows all the people; and he's known Helene since high school. His opening voiceover makes it clear that he believes where you come from is who you are. That's why the choice he makes is, for him, the only one possible.

M.

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I think this movie has bothered me more than any other film I've seen. Excellent movie by the way. I don't know what I'd do in that situation. The right thing to do, the moral thing is to return the child to her mother. It certainly wasn't the right thing to do when taking the child's well-being into consideration but despite the background does any person have the right to separate mother from child. I agree with Patrick where Social Services should have been involved if there was a concern. It's been a few weeks since I've seen this movie and I'm still thinking about it. Powerful movie and excellent directing debut by Affleck.

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I agree completely. The ending to the film is what makes it resonate, what left me thinking about what I might have done long after the film ended. I saw the movie maybe three or four weeks ago and I'm still not sure what I would have done had I been in Patrick's shoes.

But I think you may have touched upon something there when you wrote "The ending is perfect, whether or not you agree with Patrick's choice." Some people rate an ending based not on how it fit with the rest of the film, or how true it was to the characters, or anything else, but on how they feel the character should have responded or how they would have responded themselves in that situation. Reflecting on the film now, I don't really think about it as "Patrick's choice" -- I don't think he had a choice. I'm not saying that there wouldn't be a choice for anyone else making that decision, but for him, there was no other option, and he paid dearly for doing the only thing he could. I don't know how else the movie could have ended. I just know that if I had walked away from the movie without feeling any sort of conflict, without questioning what I might have done or what I thought the right thing to do was, the whole thing would have fallen apart. Sometimes movies are disposable pleasures (and don't get me wrong, I love movies like that), but sometimes they ask a lot more of us, they ask us not just to watch the events that unfold over the course of two hours but to consider those things and think about them when that time is up. I like to be challenged like that, and I appreciate the rest the director has for the audience in doing so.

Actually, of all the things in the film, what I didn't really like was the casting of Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris, which is surprising to me... those are two phenomenal actors, and it's rare that I don't like their work (even in cases where I don't like the actual film itself). Unfortunately, whenever they appeared on screen it had the effect of being like, "Hello, I'm a professional actor. Pay attention to me." I know that's not intentional and probably in my head and I don't really fault the film for it, but with all of the other parts being played by lesser known actors, having those two guys show up at various points took me out of the film a little bit.

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I agree with your comment about Freeman and Harris. Having said that, I really liked Ed Harris in GBG. He can reach emotional hills and valleys like no one else. Freeman's character could have been played by someone else. I think casting him does the film a disservice. It telegraphs the ending somewhat, if you catch my drift.

As for the aforementioned ending, I can only say this. For Patrick, you are the sum of the choices you don't get to make -- who your family is, your neighborhood, etc. The whole point of the last few minutes boils down to this: he will look out for her. He knows the score and is fully aware of what kind of a person Helene is. He will take care of things.

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There was something off about Freeman and Harris for me as well. I am really shocked to see others express similar sentiments. I have no idea what it is. These two are always excellent and they were in this film as well.

I definitely want to watch this one again.

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H

Re: *** Official GONE BABY GONE Discussion Thread

The following is in response to a post in the Software section, but the discussion is entirely about the film; so I'm putting these comments here:
 

I guess it depends on how narrowly utilitarian one defines a character's function. The film, like Lehane's fiction, is not just about plot mechanics, but it's also a portrait of a particular locale. Affleck (the director) makes it clear with the opening montage and Patrick's initial voiceover that the portraiture is as important as the plot.

Angie Gennaro is someone who grew up in the same place, knew the same people, went to the same school, etc. as Helene and Dottie, but she turned out different. (Dottie spots it instantly. "I see you're still conceited", she says to Angie the moment she enters the room.) It tells us something about the neighborhood when we see that it doesn't automatically produce Helenes and Dotties. It tells us something about Patrick when we see that Angie is the type of woman he's involved with. And it's part of the essential tragedy of the film that, because of this case, Angie and Patrick can no longer be together. Their relationship is one of the many things that, by the end of the film, are "gone baby gone". (See further discussion below.)
 

Again, I suppose it depends on how narrowly utilitarian one requires plot elements to be. To me, the Jimmy Pietro story is essential to the film, even if its importance isn't immediately obvious when you're first watching.

The Pietro kidnappers are precisely the sort of criminals that Capt. Doyle's unit was formed to track down. They're what Dets. Bressant and Poole have had to deal with for years, more often than not with the hideous outcome that Patrick encounters when he makes his way upstairs after Poole has been shot. (It was precisely for that reason that Angie didn't want to take Amy's case.) Showing the Pietro case is a way of explaining what could motivate two career detectives with (as far as we know) spotless records to engage in a series of criminal acts in the name of some "greater good" of child welfare. At some point, they'd just seen too many scenes like the one Patrick encounters.

(Yeah, I know, on one of the Law and Orders, they would have had Bressant tell his drug dealer story, and one of the bright detectives would have figured it out a few minutes later. Doink, doink; cut to commercial. But that's the difference between nuanced storytelling and formula TV.)

Or take the Pietro story from another angle: This is what Bressant and Poole should have been doing: going after genuine criminals like these, instead of appointing themselves social workers at large, answerable to no one and covering their activities with murder and fraud. While they schemed to get their boss a replacement daughter, people like Jimmy Pietro's kidnappers went on their merry way. And remember: Bressant and Poole knew those people were out there, probably on the hunt. It's one of the first things they tell Patrick and Angie.

And this brings us back to Michelle Monaghan's Angie: I agree that she makes the same "journey" as the detectives (not Morgan Freeman's captain, who's a separate case because of his personal loss), but she does it within the span of the film. And she's smart enough to know that that's exactly what will happen if they take on a child abduction case -- that she'll lose her objectivity, that she'll be changed in some unexpected way, which is why she begs Patrick not to take the case at the outset. When Angie argues with Patrick at the end of the film, it's not a "re-run" of the argument with Capt. Floyd, nor could it be. Floyd was, and always has been, Patrick's adversary. Angie is his partner, his ally and his lover. That makes it a whole different conversation, and now if Patrick wants to do what he thinks is right, it's going to cost him something personal. And it does.

Edited by Michael Reuben - 9/19/10 at 10:22pm

Re: *** Official GONE BABY GONE Discussion Thread

Finally got around to seeing this on Starz HD tonight. Holy crap what a powerful film. How did I miss this at the theater?

As much as a part of me wanted him to leave the girl with Morgan Freeman's character, he made the right decision. Knowing that it would cost him his relationship, it took a lot of courage stand by that decision.

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I can't believe people actually think he made the right decision. His stupid sense of duty and "morality" results in the destruction of the little girl's chance at having a life filled with love and attention. Not only that, his decision also destroys his own relationship and leaves him bereft.

All I could think was what a sorry assed stupid individual he was while he sat there in that room with the kid. He might as well have just shot her in the head and walked out. It would have been a mercy considering what he sentenced her to with his misdirected sense of "doing the right thing".

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The only reason that I think he made the best decision possible is because the characters don't have the right to play god and take the girl away from her mother. Returning the girl to her mother probably dooms her but they didn't have the right to take the law into their own hands and judge what is right or wrong.

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I guess in this case I would have gone the other way. I would have played "God" and walked away. I wouldn't have destroyed my relationship and doomed a kid to a life of misery and neglect out of some outmoded sense that the kid just naturally should be with her worthless trailer trash mother.

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Just saw this a few days ago. Pretty solid film. Ben Affleck clearly has talent as a director and Casey Affleck is a rising star (very natural actor). Other great actors in the film too (mainly Freeman and Harris).

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Thank you for so nicely illustrating the points I made in post 10 above.

If you read this thread carefully and without anger, I don't think you'll find anyone saying that Patrick made the "right" decision. It's harder and more complicated than that.

Forget about Patrick for a second. Did the cops who kidnapped Amy and faked her death make the "right" decision? Was it OK for THEM to "play God" and walk away?

M.

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Of course not.

But don't count Patrick out, though. Why do you think he stayed with her at the end of the flick? He's in it for the long haul -- he'll look out for her.

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Sorry, Brett, but yours isn't the answer I'm interested in.

I don't need any convincing, but Edwin obviously doesn't see it that way:

As I said above, I'm intrigued by people who are so utterly certain that Patrick acted wrongly but have nothing to say about the actions of the cops. Hence my question to Edwin.

M.

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I don't see it that way because nothing in the movie really suggests that he will be in it "for the long haul". As I see it, his actions have trapped him in a situation that he didn't expect. People who are trapped in situations tend to be unhappy in them. AFAIAC, he is more likely to start seeing the kid as the object responsible for his unfortunate situation. Eventually, he is more likely to start feeling resentful toward the kid and will start to take his frustrations out on her. I'm not sure how you guys conclude that a happy ending will result. The entire movie demonstrates that life is generally unhappy, shitty, and a lot of times.....short.



I'm still trying to figure out how to answer this question. You have presented me with a conundrum.

Re: *** Official GONE BABY GONE Discussion Thread

I can't claim credit. It's the movie (and the novel) that present the conundrum. I'm just providing a reminder.

Speaking of "playing God", that's yet another aspect of the Jimmy Pietro story. It's Patrick's experience of playing God: an avenging, Old Testament, eye-for-an-eye God who dispatches Jimmy's killer in a moment of anger. But it doesn't make him feel good, even when cops are patting him on the back at Poole's funeral. And that's a big part of what leads him to the conclusion that people shouldn't play God.

Edited by Michael Reuben - 9/19/10 at 10:21pm